


Caim

by Eiramma



Series: Caim [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Also all survival techniques have NOT been approved by Bear Grills, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Before TFA, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hux the cadet years, M/M, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Romance, SoftKylux, The Force, The Force Ships It, fair warning there is a little blood but its not like Stephen King level, living my best quarantine life writing about these losers, thanks for reading if ya choose to take a gander, this was super self indulgent yall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23746291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiramma/pseuds/Eiramma
Summary: Hux is stolen from his academy bunk late one night and is dumped on the frozen waste land that is Ilum along with a small handful of his other classmates. Despite never having dreamed a night of his life, on his first night on this frozen planet, Hux finds himself in the body of an angry padawan, Ben Solo. As his stay on Ilum continues, it becomes apparent that pair of them share some sort of deep connection forged through mysticism of the Force, that permits them spend their dreams in one another's waking lives, and Hux has no idea why. But with danger lurking around every snow covered tree, Hux begins to wonder if he will be able to live long enough to understand the mystery of their bond, never mind deal with the growing fondness for the other boy that has begun to bloom in his heart.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Series: Caim [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1710583
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	Caim

**Author's Note:**

> Hey kids, 
> 
> So this is a little thing that I started in February after being inspired by Kylux positivity week and have recently had time to finish due to the lovely thing that is quarantine. Well here it is! Enjoy!

_ Day  _ 2,238.

A squad from Academy’s High Command stole Hux from his bunk in the dead of night. Though he has been expecting the event for a few weeks now, he is still understandably startled when it's the touch of foreigners hand’s that rip him from the dark static of his slumber, instead of his usual alarm. Hux immediately begins to thrash when he feels the first of four vice-like hands snare his ankles and wrists to wrestle him away from where he’d been cocooned under a scratchy regulation blanket. In the dark of his bunk Hux can’t quite figure who his kidnappers are, but the hand that shove’s a gag into his mouth feels broad and smells like sour sweat in the same way Captain Nahora’s did each time he’d use one to shove Hux’s face into the mud during freshman year boot camp. 

The hands hoist Hux out of bed. He gives them a feral fight with his trapped limbs flailing about trying to land some sort of hit. His efforts are useless, Hux is carted away from his bed kicking away like a feral felinix. 

They carry him head first from his Cadet Captain bunk located at the rear of D Barrack, to the large pair metal doors located at the building’s front. They pass by the stacked beds of Hux’s troop of Cadet Ensigns, each failing to stir from their deep slumbers, as their Unit Captain is being unwillful spirited away in the dead of night. If Hux had the use of his mouth he’d have their hides for their incompetence.

But then Hux smells the sweetness of the air and understands:  _ Fairy Floss. _ The fragrant drug flows through the barrack in a thick cloud that purges Hux’s nostrils, it’s potent scent practically burning his nose hairs off. Once the rest of his senses catch up to what is happening it becomes increasingly difficult to stay conscious. He resists as long as he can. His vision becomes increasingly foggier and his limbs weaker, the gaseous drug is making him pliant and Hux loathes it. 

The last thing Hux sees before losing consciousness is the light of twin full moons shining from the overhead windows lining the east facing walls of the barrack. Hux’s murky mind can’t help but think the cutting light looks like the reverse shadow of a fleet of Resurgence Star Destroyers.

__

_ Sol 1. _

Hux is worried. 

The snow has begun to pick up since he woke up on the planet--Ilum--that High Command dumped him on. It is now steadily blanketing the forest floor of the frigid planet in a sheet of plush white so thick that Hux’s boots sink knee high with each step. The sun has also begun to set, slowly disappearing behind the purple mountain peaks on the horizon, its growing absence leaving a frigid chill in the air. Hux has well found doubts that when the small sun finally vanishes from the horizon, the towering naked trees with their speckled white bark and wicked limbs that comprise the vast forest will not provide sufficient shelter. Not to mention that the wet wood has scarce potential for starting an adequate fire, which will make the duration of his mission difficult if this sort of frigid cold is to continue to persist.

So yes, considering the circumstances, Hux is worried.

On the positive side, Hux has thus far not encountered another living creature for the better part of his seemingly endless trek into the woods. Given the nature of this particular creative training exercise the prestigious faculty of the Arkanis Academy has cooked up, this is indeed something to take comfort in. 

The last thing Hux will want to do here is wrestle for his survival with some animal, he’ll be doing plenty of that when he comes across his fellow classmates, as per tradition of the infamous Rousseau assignment.

Also, Hux supposes that he should be grateful that whoever had stolen him from his bed last night, had the courtesy of dressing him for the weather before dumping him on this desolate planet. He doesn't even want to entertain the idea as to where he’d be without the waterproof boots and the gaberwool coat wrapped around his lithe frame. 

So Hux counts his blessings as he continues to hoof it through the snowy wood. However, he is soon forced to reconsider his previous stance on the lack of wildlife he’s encountered thus. The lightness of the standard issued survival pack that thumps rhythmically against Hux’s narrow back is concerning, the absence of any game to hunt could be detrimental to Hux’s chances of survival. 

The abstract threat of starvation becomes more real the deeper he hikes and the silence of Ilum leaves Hux unsettled. For the appearing vastness of it the wood is entirely too quiet, it is void of even the faint whispers of bird song, and not even the trees rattling in the wind makes the sort of loudness that Hux had grown used to while wandering in the forests of Arkanis when he was nothing more than a lad. 

He expects these circumstances to change once he eventually collides with whichever of his classmates have been chosen to share his misfortune. The Cadet Captain, for all intents and purposes hopes their interactions will occur sooner rather than later so that he can get off this hellscape of a planet. 

There will be blood and there will be noise and Hux will relish in all of it 

That will be something to look forward to tomorrow.

As for today (what’s left of it), Hux needs to focus on finding adequate shelter. The sun has nearly all but disappeared behind the mountains, only a hint of its warmth lingers, the rays caught in the wicked branches that tangle in thickets above Hux’s ginger head. The stars emerging in the darkening sky taunt him, the threat of hypothermia in their twinkling smiles. Hux walks quicker with no true direction in mind other than further and deeper shelter, his legs burning with the effort of cutting through the thick snow. 

_ Per angusta ad augusta,  _ Hux tells himself and continues to trek through the woods. 

A while later Hux finds a cluster of close growing trees whose thick naked branches create a canopy cradle, high above the forest floor and he could not be happier about his discovery if he tried.

Hux cranes his head skyward to gaze at the branches. From his position on the forest floor Hux can’t really gauge the structural integrity of the naturally mangled canopy, they appear to be thick enough. When he inspects the trunks of the trees and finds no traces of rot in the pale bark, Hux determines the tree’s structure is to his satisfaction and is trustworthy enough. So with these promising qualities factored in with the overwhelming desire to not get his throat slit by any of his fellow Cadet Captains, in what he presumes will be a sorry excuse of a tent, Hux begins the climb.

It’s when Hux has got his Academy issued belt wrapped around the trunk of the narrowest tree and is half-way through heaving himself up the side of it, that he begins to feel the fatigue of the day copulating with the strain of his climb. His arms are beginning to ache something fierce and there’s a growing burn in his thighs that's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. There’s a pounding in his skull that’s sending the branches above spinning, the longer he spends trying to scale the tree. 

Needless to say, it's a relief when he finally reaches the point where the interlocking branches meet high above the ground. 

Hux permits himself a moment to settle on one of the thicker branches to catch his breath and rest his muscles, before he begins to set up camp for the night.

Hux makes quick work of freeing the skin of his tent from his pack, and uses a number of paracords to secure the canvas to what he presumes to be the strongest branches. He takes care to tie the canvas down with the proper knots, treading softly between the branches, the fear of falling to his death is enough to keep the shakes of exhaustion from his hands. 

Once through, Hux heaves his pack off his back and then proceeds to toss it into the makeshift hammock, figuring he would rather have his supplies plumet back down to the forest floor opposed to himself. The pack lands in a hefty fashion, causing the paracords holding the tent down to creak in a threatening manner that sends Hux’s heart to his stomach. He waits five long minutes, and when the whole thing doesn’t collapse Hux climbs in. With unsteady limbs he settles himself against the harsh ‘y’ shaped cradle of a pair of nearby branches, he uses the toe of his boot to hook around the strap of his backpack to pull the knapsack toward him. Hux dumps the continents of it onto the canvas before him, to catalog what exactly he was working with. 

Four protein bars, a large thermos of standard nutrition paste, a full water skin, a basic med kit, a rain tarp for the tent currently being used as a hammock, an emergency blanket, a knife made with polished metal, four cartilages of plasma charges for his long distance blaster rifle, and the parts of said long range blaster disassembled into its basic parts for his carrying convenience; these are the meager continents of his pack. Hux is pleasantly surprised, he expected there to be less but he can work with this. 

Hux repacks everything except the rain tarp, the emergency blanket, and the bits of his rifle. He spends the next few minutes left of sunlight, assembling his rifle, handling each of the metal pieces with reverence. The methodological process is soothing, Hux takes comfort in the way the sleek barrel slides easily into the sling point to connect with the gun's bolt, action point, and rear support. The long range scope clicks into place on top of the whole thing to complete the entire weapon, Hux reaches into the pack and pulls out one of the plasma cartridges to slide easily into the magazine. 

Once through, Hux curls in on himself the best he can with the rifle propped against his chest, and wrapping himself up in the tarp as well as the blanket in hopes to keep dry as well as warm through the night. The gun, where it rests against Hux’s narrow chest, is a welcome weight. In an odd way it makes the vast wilderness below and beyond seem lesser which quelled a previous unacknowledged stuttering heartbeat in Hux’s chest. 

Hux spends the next few minutes watching the sun dip lower, and lower behind the mountains until it vanishes behind the mountains to be gone for however long it wishes to be. Hux can only hope that it will come back in a few hours. Short nights on this hellscape would be a kind blessing. 

When the sun finally vanishes, the temperature drops significantly. There’s an unforgiving chill that settles in his bones, that brings a sharp ache to his joints that makes gripping his layers closer to him a near impossible task. Though his position in the tree canopy gives him an excellence advantage, awarded by having the high ground, the glacier-like wind that whips through the tree’s is proving to be cumbersome to say the least. As a countermeasure, Hux abandons his current upright position, and hunkers down for the night on his side with his knees to his chest, his rifle pinned between his lean thighs, and his aching fingers holding onto his layers for dear life.

After some time the wind finally dies down, allowing Hux to shiver himself into a deep sleep and the most alarming thing happens, for the first time in his 18 years, Hux dreams.

Since Hux could remember, he’s never dreamed, his nights were always filled with cold darkness accompanied by the noise of the world shifting around him. There were never colors, never lights, never any other people, just Hux alone in the darkness waiting for his inevitable return to the waking world. Sometimes he could hear voices speaking in foregin tongues, accents thick with the heavy weight of vowels falling from behind dense sounding teeth, and the sound of people moving around an invisible room like ghosts. On those nights, Hux was sure he was in one of the hells, never quite resting, subconsciously worried one of these disembodied voices would slit his throat leaving him to bleed out in his bed.

This would not be a suitable end for Cadet Captain Armitage Hux.

Either way to Hux’s immense surprise--unlike every other night of his life--he fell from his frigid canopy bungalow, into the elaborate illusion of someone’s sparse bedroom somewhere warm and blissfully distant from Ilum. 

In the dream he “wakes' ' to the sun on his face and the age-worn voice of a man calling him Ben, with a foregin sort of hard emphasis on the ‘e’ sound. Beneath his fingers he feels the reeds of a crudely made coarse grass mat, on his body is a thinly woven blanket of red and gold that Hux had never seen before in his entire life. 

His head lifts from where it had been resting on a thin pillow, eyes scanning the strange room he has woken up in. The whole room before him is foregin, round in diameter and seems to be constructed from simple materials. A red clay has been hardened to construct the walls that give way to the thaches of thick yellow reeds which make up the ceiling overhead. There are two arching doorways. One leads to what appears to be a washroom of sorts complete with a water basin the same color as the walls, the other contains a short man sporting graying blonde hair and very impressive scowl.

“You slept through morning meditation, again” The man scolds, raising his hands to rest on his hips. 

Hux--or more precisely Ben with Hux along for the ride--rises to his feet and stretches his arms far above his head, his fingertips brush the straw of the ceiling. Ben’s body here feels strange to Hux, it's a lumbering sort of mass that feels dense with a sort of neanderthalic quality. With every subtle movement Hux is increasingly reminded that this body it’s not his own.

“Sorry Uncle Luke,” he says in a voice that is not his own and that does not sound very sorry at all.

“Master Luke” The man, Luke, corrects with his arms crossed into the sleeves of the long brown robe he wears.

Ben heaves a heavy sigh. “Sorry  _ Master  _ Luke,” he grits out. Hux feels the words as they are being pulled from his mouth by Luke’s hands, plucking them from where they hide between Ben’s teeth. 

Hux does not understand where Ben’s aggravation towards the older man comes from, has no contextual experience to go on, but remembering the anger towards his own father helps Hux feel it all the same.

Luke glares at Ben, or more appropriately directs a harsh sort of squint Ben’s way that’s lost underneath the heavy brow of graying blonde hair. “Midday lessons begin in an hour, don’t be late,” he says before walking out the door and into the midday heat.

Once Luke has left, Ben picks up the pillow from where it lays on his unmade bed and wails it against a wall where it lands with a powerful thump. Not satisfied with the pillow, he tries to wreck the bed next. Kick up the covers with big clumsy swings of his feet and throw the grass mat against the same wall as a pillow. 

After his fit, he then walks with heavy limbs toward the door of the washroom. He fills the basin with water that runs easily from a copper colored spicket. Hux can’t remember the last time he’s seen running water, it’s not a common find at the academy and its absence is with the purpose of preparing the students for their future lives in space that will be void of such comforts. 

Once the basin is full, Hux feels as Ben uses large foregin hands marred with moles and a handful of hairline scars. The hands he wields are much thicker than the ones Hux is used to seeing when he’s looking down at his own from this first person perspective. Gone are his narrow, freckled covered, and nimble hands, they are now replaced with those of Ben. 

Ben’s hands easily form a cup when put together to heft the water from the basin and onto his face. They scrub the water into his face, where Hux finds with touch a large nose, full lips, and thick brows. Hux’s borrowed hands then leave his face to dip into the water once more, sinking in fully until thick fingers brush the rough clay bottom. They ascend past his face, rising until they settle into the hair on top of his head, which is thick and heavy with waves that tangle around his fingers. A stark contrast to the short military cut of Hux’s own flame colored hair. 

Once through, his hands return to the basin and brace themselves on the edges with a white knuckled grip. With a heavy breath Ben raises his head to the mirror above and Hux faces the boy whose body he’s borrowed.

Ben is exactly how Hux pictured him through touch. 

His face all curves and as pale as the sands of Arkanis speckled with common black sea shells washed ashore by the waves so similar to the ones on top the boy’s inverted triangle shaped head. Housed on this face is the nose, the lips, and the brow Hux had remembered his fingers ghosting over, as well as a pair of brown eyes, dark as volcanic rock.

Hux can’t help but think immediately that Ben is the most handsome boy he’s ever seen. 

Ben stares into the mirror, as if he can see Hux through the reflective glass. Hux tries to force him to look away, to wake himself up, anything to get away from the scrutiny of that stare. But when Ben doesn’t budge he is once again reminded that he is not in control, which frightens him. 

Hux despises not being in control of a situation.

A wrinkle settles between Ben’s dark brows, a quizzical hardness in his eyes. He leans in closer towards the mirror, and at the sight Hux can’t help but speculate the boy is looking right through the glass and into Hux’s own sea glass eyes. That the other boy sees him and knows Hux has trespassed. That Hux doesn’t belong here, wherever here, may be. That he belongs back in the snow, fighting for his life. 

“Who are you?” Ben utters, no louder than a whisper.

Hux doesn’t attempt to answer. So Ben asks again.

“Who are you!?” Ben yells with a raw fury.

Hux is startled awake by the force of Ben’s voice. His eyes fly open to stare at a still darken star speckled sky, and the silhouette of tree branches mangled together. His heart is threatening to break out of his rib cage with each harsh beat against the bones there. A weak gasps escapes his thin lips when the rest of his consciousness returns to his body and Hux becomes acutely aware of his own limbs once more.

Once Hux’s heart has settled down he contemplates going back to sleep, but the wind has picked up once more proving it to be far too cold to sleep. Frankly it was a miracle that Hux fell asleep the first time. 

He spends the remaining hours of the evening disassembling and reassembling his blaster rifle in the cold dark. The motions are easily done blind, Hux’s fingers finding the right sockets and slides for all the parts. He allows his mind to drift back towards warmer planets and warmer eyes.

By the time the sun rises over the mountains, Hux’s fingers are aching and there's a raw sort of hunger in his stomach. He eats one of his nutrition bars to quell his hunger, it goes down in dry rough crumbles that leave Hux’s stomach quiet but his appetite unsatisfied. He finds himself longing for the thick stews his Mathair used to make him in his youth, she always made them hearty with all kinds of vegetables, thick cuts of meat, and served with hunks of homemade sour bread to sop up the broth. 

The sounds his stomach makes at the memories of the taste of the stews are mournful, but the pain he feels in his heart when Hux allows himself to picture her--tall and willow like himself--standing in the manor kitchen chopping carrots to dump into a simmering pot while telling him folk tales from her culture, is far worse.

Hux angrily wipes at the tears in his eyes that form without his permission.

_ Per angusta, an augusta _ , Hux mutters into the wind and then begins to strategize.

_ Sol 3. _

The morning after his first dream, Hux wakes up with a buzzing in his head. It’s as if a swarm of black petral flies crawled into his ear while he slept. The noise is accompanied with the uncomfortable sensation of what Hux can only describe as imaginary fingers combing through his skull, probing at the pink fleshy matter of his brain. 

The whole feeling of it is indescribably strange and the flies nor the fingers will dissipate no matter how hard Hux shakes his head. The murkiness of his head makes Hux forgo any ideas of leaving his tree. Instead he sits back against the rough bark of the tree with the tarp as well as the blanket wrapped around him with his rifle propped against his chest, favoring a sniper's approach. He leaves the safety off and ingests the recommended amount of nutrition paste for a man his size. Despite its benefits, the paste is horrendous. It’s flavorless and the texture is like pre-eaten food, Hux chokes it down with a chaser of water from the skin. 

After a while the buzzing stops.

_ Sol 6.  _

By the sixth sol Hux continues to dream as Ben and the probing fingers have persisted but the buzzing noise has turned into what sounds like whispered nothings being breathed into the inner shell of Hux’s ear. It’s got him on edge all day. Has him fiddling with the safety of his rifle obsessively. He feels crazy, but knows it’s too early for madness. After some consideration Hux once again decides to remain in his tree. 

Hux wishes somebody would appear so that he could shoot them and feel less insane. 

_ Sol 9. _

Hux spends three more cold nights in the tree and each of those nights he dreams himself onto that sunny warm planet and into Ben’s body. 

Now like everybody else, Hux has heard of the Force and its properties and the mythical nature of those who can wield it; the Sith, the Jedi, and what have you. No one growing up in the ruins of the decrepit Empire hadn’t. However, it was an entirely different experience seeing the Force in action, rather than understanding it in the abstract.

What Hux has gathered from his nights traveling around in Ben's body is that the other boy is part of the legendary cults of mystics that are the Jedi, whom apparently camp out in clay huts on some desert planet and spend hours meditating and reading from molding text printed on archaic forms of paper. All of this appears to be done in some sort of strange effort at an education. They are led by the old scraggly man from the first dream who happens to be the equally legendary, Luke Skywalker. 

In addition to the meditation and the reading, the lot of them spent hours in the sand, willing rocks to move with outstretched hands and focused faces with the flabbergasting results of the rocks actually moving from their original spot to elsewhere. Sometimes the older ones of the troop would spend time sparring with one another with lightsabers varying in hue, with Luke pacing around them commenting on their form. 

From what Hux has gathered from his unwilling observations, Ben seems to be beyond proficient in nearly all of these areas; his movements looser than the others when willing objects into locomotion at his will, despite the temperamental properties of his volatile lightsaber he bests his sparring partner each and every time, and his ability to read as well as comprehend the laborious texts of old, are far better than any other.

Oddly these exemplary feats and achievements in Ben’s schooling cause a worrisome wrinkle to form in the middle of Luke’s brow. This divot in Luke’s forehead is intensified when it becomes apparent that Ben’s classmates don’t really care for him, which is something Hux can relate to. 

Either way, it's all so crude and strange and so different from Hux’s own schooling and he hates every minute he’s forced to listen to Luke lecture about the Jedi code and its teachings. He prays to all the heavens to dream of anything else, to be anywhere else. And based on what he’s gathered from Ben’s body language, the way his hands flex into white knuckled fists when Luke so much as breathes near him, he’d rather be anywhere else as well. 

Hux has begun to assume the whole experience is one sided. That he’s some sort of collateral damage to some Jedi mind trick gone wrong. This however proves to not be the case on his ninth day stranded upon the fresh icelandish hellscape that is Ilum.

One the morning of the ninth day Hux awakes with the persistent whispers, an ache in his neck, and a hollowness in his stomach. To soothe his stomach Hux chooses to eat a protein bar, the texture of it so dry that not even the presence of water helped it float down his throat. He finds himself once again longing for his Mathiar’s cooking. Hux can practically taste the buttery crust of her homemade beef hand pies, the savory gravy oozing from the edge as he bites into. Hux looks at the protein bar in his hand and sighs. 

Then all of a sudden the whispers in his head turns into words.

_ That looks kriffing disgusting,  _ the unmistakable voice of Ben says. The words so clear it’s almost as if Ben was leaning over his shoulder, with those plush lips pressed right to his ear. The sound of his voice makes Hux choke on the remainder of his nutrition bar. 

_ Sol 12.  _

The dreams persist and Hux has come to accept them as they come, finding them a welcome change from the static darkness he’d grown used to.

After the first time, Ben soon figures out he’s able to speak to Hux anytime he wants. Once he comes to this conclusion, Ben never ceases speaking and Hux never knew another moment of peace. Ben seems to enjoy prattling on about any topic that comes to mind, topics ranging from the principles of proper lightsaber maintenance to favorite homeworld foods. He’s also found great entertainment in narrating the dull tasks Hux accomplishes while on Ilum. 

At first Hux ignores him.

But then Ben makes some ridiculous point about the X-Wing being the superior fighter model and Hux can’t let that stand, not when he in good conscience knows that Tie-Fighter could fly circles around some pathetic New Republic made X-wing. 

And then just like that he makes a friend, the only concern Hux has is how imaginerary is he?

_ Sol  _ 15 _. _

On the morning of the 15th sol, Hux decides to descend from the tree after holding himself up in its canopy for the 14 sols prior, surviving off his nutrition bars, nutrition paste, and bits of snow that clung to the branches above. It’s the consumption of his second nutrition bar that prompts the decision, Hux knows he’ll have to have a better food source if he’s to make a good go of surviving this particular excursion. Not to mention there's no telling how long he’ll be stranded here, it's all dependent on how long it will take the rest of his classmates to die. 

So after assembling his supplies into his pack and with his rifle slung over his back, Hux prepares to descend the tree.

_ “Leaving the nest?”  _ Ben questions, and Hux can just picture his dark brows furrowing in puzzlement.

“Waiting to die in that tree won’t do me any good,” Hux grits out heaving his pack and rifle over his shoulder.

_ “Die?”  _ Ben asks, sounding startled like the potential of Hux’s demise is new to him.

Hux doesn’t grace this question with an answer. Doesn’t quite know how to explain this particular Academy assignment at the moment, not while his stomach is threatening to devour itself. Besides Ben must know that Hux hasn’t been living in a tree for the past two weeks for shvits and giggles. 

His silence doesn’t satisfy Ben.

_ “Hux what do you mean die?”  _ Ben asks and Hux almost thinks he sounds worried, which does something strange to his stomach that Hux is quite sure he’s willing to separate from hunger at this point. 

_ “Hux.” _

The Cadet Captain sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll explain later Ben, I promise,” he says in a placiting tone. This seems to pacify Ben for now. 

He leaves his cobbled together canopy hammock in the tree. He hopes nobody will come across it, but not worried enough to go through the efforts of disassembling it. The descent is a delicate process that takes ages, it sets Hux’s nerves on end each moment he spends suspended in the open air. At one point about midway down the tree in the far off distance Hux hears the sound of crunching snow and he’s certain he’ll be shot out of the tree, by Hanney mostly likely next to Hux she was the best sniper shot. But after a number of stuttered heart beats and strained breaths, the noise is revealed to be coming from a native of the planet with wide hoofs and a rack of antlers thicker than the best of the tree branches. 

When Hux reaches the bottom of the tree, his boots crash into the snow breaking through the thin layer of ice that had crusted over the layer of previously soft white snow. The sound makes a loud crack that echoes through the forest, the noise causes Hux to freeze where he stands. He surveys the frozen landscape before him, when he sees nothing Hux swings his rifle around front and switches the safety off. He picks a direction and begins to walk, it’s not much of a strategy but it's the best he’s got at the moment.

With each step the snow crunches beneath his feat, Hux can already begin to feel bruises forming on his shins. The noise of crunching snow is amplified in his ears, setting his nerves on edge and makes his movements skittish as an Arkanisian hare. For a moment he contemplates returning to the tree, but the thought feels too close to a cowardice retreat, thus Hux forces himself to press on. He refuses to die of starvation tucked away in some hiding hole, like some weak willed scum. Though that is always what his superiors--his Father included--had thought would happen to Hux, his dexterous mind having no sway away from the sight of his willow like body.

_ “Where are you going?”  _ Ben asks. 

“I don’t know.”

Hux’s trek takes him further into the woods and away from the naked trees towards ones thickly covered in thin needles. Their dense branches block out most of the winter sunlight, leaving patches of freezing shade that make Hux’s fingers numb in their gloves. Here he is reminded of his brief spot of childhood spent on Arkanis, before it was seized by the Republic. 

When Hux was young, no older than six, his Father would often take him game hunting in the woods behind their estate. Their excursions were never more than a day, and were usually accompanied by a canine or two--much to Hux’s displeasure, even young he’d alway prefered the company of felines. They’d always go at the opening of each hunting season, no matter the weather, which was almost always miserable on Arkanis. 

These trips were the first time Hux held a blaster of anysort. 

His Father had custom ordered Hux a hunting rifle of his own for his fifth birthday, much to the displeasure of both his Mathair and Maratelle. However, for Hux it had been love at first sight. It was a tiny thing that looked particularly dwarfed when held in his Father’s large hands, but was just right when Hux had taken it on his own. The rifle was a pretty thing too, all mat silver that gleamed in the sunlight and with a thick leather strap that had Hux’s initials branded into it. 

The rifle was the last gift Hux’s Father had ever given him. At the time Hux thought the rifle to be his first tangible weapon, but as he grew older Hux understood that all of the rifle's predecessors had been weapons in their own right. His box of toy soldiers teaching him battle strategy through him playing war, wicket bats and balls giften to him to build his strength and dexterity, and replicas of Empire era Star Destroyers meant to remind Hux of his past. All efforts made by his Father to groom him into the perfect soldier early on.

In contrast to his Father, Hux’s Mathair always gifted him soft things. The days leading up to his birthday, she would spend the few nights she was away from the kitchen using soft gaberwool to knit him items to keep out the Arkasian chill. Her work calloused fingers using a pair of thick wooden needles to create hats, socks, and mittens. Each and every one of them dark green, Hux’s favorite color, and each and everyone of them had a small ‘A’ embroidered, for ‘Armie.’ A name Hux’s Mathair had exclusive permission to use.

Out of fear of Hux’s Father’s wrath or Maratelle’s scorn, Hux’s Mathair would present the gifts in secret, which was a fairly difficult task, given Commandant Hux often had whistle blowers tucked away in dark corners all around the estate. Luckily, Hux’s Mathair had a wonderful coconspitor and friend in a young maid named Aine. Hux’s Mathair would often slip Hux’s presents under the porridge bowl on his breakfast tray, and Aine would carry them to him through the servants corridors, careful to bypass anyone prone to idle gossip that’d threaten Hux’s Mathair position at the estate and in turn her proximity to her son. 

Hux would always make a point to wear the gifts in his Mathair’s presence. With Aine’s assistance, Hux would sneak out of bed late into the night to meet his Mathair in the kitchen. He’d be decked in all of his finery along with his pajamas, and every year His Mathair would comment on how handsome he looked. They’d then light a candle on a redberry cake Hux’s Mathair made in secret, and she’d quietly sing him a joyous tune in her native Arkanian tongue. After the cake was eaten, Hux’s Mathair would read to him while he sat perched in her lap, dozing to the rolling sound of her voice. 

Afterward Hux would hide away his Mathair’s gifts in the floorboards beneath his bed, fearing the sort of unpleasant consequences that would arise if they were found by his Father. He was forced to leave them behind when Arakanis was evacuated during the first great siege. On the odd day, Hux wonders if the gifts are still there after all these years. Hux does not care much about the small rifle he was forced to leave behind, after all the memories attached to the rifle were not nearly as pleasant as any of the ones he made with his Mathair. 

On the hunting trips Hux attended with his Father he was taught a number of lessons, the most important being how to kill. 

Hux’s Father taught him to never aim for the heart of an animal if he could help it, the only way to ensure a clean kill was to use the scope to hit the eye. Shooting the animal anywhere else threatens to taint the meat, which was unacceptable. To accomplish this task leads to a number of hours waiting in the mud, snow, suffocating humidity, what have you, until their long awaited prey comes into view. If Hux missed the eye socket, his Father would hand him a knife made of cool steel and made him slit the animal’s throat to end its suffering.

The first time this happened, a mousy brown colored hare, Hux had refused to slit the animal’s throat. His Father had used an iron grip around his wrist to force Hux’s hand to carve into the furry flesh, making him watch the remainder of life vanish from its eye. Hux had sobbed for hours after the event. It had been easy when the killing was done at a distance, when he didn’t have to watch the very life vanish from a creature's eyes with its blood cooling on his hands. 

Afterward his Mathair consoled him and made him his favorite flakey hand pies and told him a folk tale about sleek whiskered creatures who lived in the seas, wearing gray coats and hiding away from sailors who wished to steal them. 

His Father on the other hand broke Hux’s arm for his tears. Hux did not cry the second time. 

When he was ten, Hux killed his first person. 

He and his Father had been out hunting in the snow, they’d trek through the thickest part of the woods out behind the Hux’s estate. They’d spent hours hunkered down in the lower levels of the brush, with their respective hunting rifles poised, waiting for an Iilk to pass by. The light had gotten low when the first sight of the creature Hux had though emerged from a cluster of brush far out into the wood. Excited to finally have his long awaited prey insight, Hux took the shot. The supposed beast had gone down with relative ease, hardly making a sound. His Father had clapped him on the shoulder in an act of praise, as the pair of them rose up from where they had been crouched and walked through the snow to approach Hux’s kill. It was much to either of their morbid surprise, when they found a man dying in the snow where a beast should have laid. 

Hux remembers the surprise of the sight, the look of the man in the snow. He had been young, with dark eyes and even darker hair. His blood had rain in heavy currents from the blaster wound in his neck, dying the snow red and soaking through an orange pilot’s suit with what Hux would later recognize to be the sigil of the Rebel Alliance sewed into the arm. There was a blaster at his hip, that his hand had struggled to reach once those dark eyes had found Hux’s Father’s. 

His Father had kicked the blaster away with a decisive wing of his booted foot, he looked at the dying pilot with disgust. He then turned those cold eyes to Hux, who under his gaze raised a hand to the vibro blade clipped to his belt, preparing to slit the throat of the struggling animal before him. However he was stopped by the broad hand of his Father placed on his narrow shoulder. 

“Leave him Armitage,” he said. 

Hux looked at his Father with quizzical eyes.

His father gave no answer to the question in Hux’s eyes, he merely stares at the gasping man who lays at their feet. Not quite sure what to do with himself, Hux finds himself doing the same. It's with a sick fascination that he observes the last of the man’s blood and his breath leaves his body. 

Afterward Hux’s Father spoke once more. “There will be no mercy for you in the field Armitage, it’s best you learn early not to show them any mercy either.” 

This was the second hunting lesson. 

Hux thinks of this lesson learned in his youth, when he emerges from the thickets and into a snowy clearing where he finds none other than his dear classmate Mariposa. 

She’s made quite the little home for herself Hux reckons while taking in her modest camp site. Mariposa, the short and broad thing she is, is crouched over a modest fire built in a dug out pit in the ground with a pair of skinned, hare like creatures turning slowly on a spicket. Near the pit is a secondary dug out pile of snow, where Hux assumes Mariposa has spent most nights hunkered down, her teeth chattering in the wind. 

Seeing her, crouching there over the orange fire with her dark hair being tossed by the wind, Hux feels a sudden fondness for a memory of a young girl who invited him to sit with her at lunch on their first day at the Academy. They only shared one meal together, it was filled with a sort of nervous energy and they hardly spoke to one another, but a still wet-behind-the-ears Hux had appreciated it all the same then.

Along with this, Hux remembers that Mariposa had freckles then, as did Hux. The Arkanis sun, on the odd day it did choose to make its appearance, was harsh and unforgiving. They were a pair of spotted Toddies when the sun was so inclined. However unlike Mariposa and her lightly olive tinted skin, Hux often found himself burned a fine red after a turn around the yard in a bright afternoon sun. They both lost their freckles when the planet was evacuated and they both spent much of their time tumbling around space, where there seems to be plenty of stars but no suns. 

The pair of them shared many of the same childhood experiences, which in many instances may have cultivated a proper friendship of somesort. However this was not enough in the places they grew up. The memory had been nice, but Hux’s fondness for it is fleeting.

It diminishes when Mariposa lifts her head from her fire and spots Hux where he stands between the trees not far from her fire. 

Her blue eyes are cold with scorn for him, “Half-light” she spits. 

Hux fires a shot quicker then she's able to draw her own gun. 

The blaster bolt lands square between her eyes. It's not the sort of shot Hux’s Father would have prefered but it gets the job done all the same. Due to the distance between them, the results are messy. Bits of her brain matter splatter on to the trunk of the tree behind her, painting the bark a deep red. Her body collapses backward, which is all the same. Hux doesn’t feel much like fishing whatever supplies he plans to poach from her person out of the still burning fire. Mariposa’s body makes a hard thump when it lands in the snow, her blood painting it a deep red, much like the man from Hux’s youth. 

With Mariposa dead, Hux feels no more of that fondness, and no remorse. She was after all only a friend for an afternoon, quickly turned enemy when she learned how to wield that slur; half-light. 

Hux reholsters his rifle and approaches the pitiful camp site. He kicks some snow over the fire to kill the flames, the sound of the blaster shot is bound to attract unwelcomed company eventually and he doesn’t need the smoke of the fire aiding this. Hux crouches over Mariposa’s body and strips it of anything valuable. 

He takes her gaberwool coat, the gloves off her hands, and the socks from her feet. Next he scrounges around for her blanket and tarp, both of which he finds in a her pack tangled around a container of half used nutrition paste. He takes everything and stashes them in his own pack. He turns to flee the camp before he remembers the freshly skinned hares on the spicket. Hux doubles back to take those as well, attaching the cooked carcasses to his belt. 

Through all of this and the entire trek back to Hux’s tree, Ben remains silent. This allows a blossoming of concern to bloom in Hux’s chest. The realization of the sight that Ben had just witnessed through his eyes, must have been startling for someone--as far as Hux knew--was not acclimated with the actual practice of taking some one’s life. Hux feels obligated to check on his possibly imaginary friend, offering him some sort of comfort.

“Ben?” Hux murmurs.

The only reply he gets in the sound of the frigid wind mingling with the slow crunching of his steps. It is at this moment Hux is certain that Ben was never real, that spending so much time in the tree had muddle with his mind. This is a blow to his ego, Hux had always prided himself for his mental dexterity and stability in high pressure situations. Thought it redeemed him for whatever he may lack in physical prowess. But to be so easily taken down by a few days of isolation is unacceptable.

_ Foolish, foolish, foolish.  _ Hux barratts himself and is so wrapped up in his self chasization that he is fully unprepared for Ben to speak. 

_ “Hux.”  _ Ben says, Hux’s name carefully weighed out. 

Hux stops walking. 

“Ben?” He mutters, eyes staring straight ahead into the forest as if the boy in question will materialize from behind one of the trees. He almost wishes Ben would, having some tangible proof the other boy exists would do well to calm Hux’s nerves, rather than being forced to trust in the mystics of the Force.

_ “Why?”  _ Ben asks and the fear in that single word is easily pliable into a million different questions.

Hux picks the easiest one to answer. “Because I had to, she would have killed me,” he explains. 

There’s a breath of silence, where Hux can almost feel Ben breathing in his ear. Hux bites his lip and readjusts his rifle. Then the other boy utters a soft  _ “oh.” _

Hux can tell Ben is still confused, quite possibly even horrified, but he’s not even sure how to begin to explain something that has always just been an inevitable conclusion for him as well as all others who have grown up in the Academy. But because it’s Ben, Hux finds it in himself to try.

Hux starts to walk again and with a preceding sigh begins to tell Ben everything. He begins with the Academy, how its teachings are so very different they are compared to Ben’s hippy-dippy Jedi cult of Force users. How for Hux and five other Cadet Captains, graduation isn’t just passing a number of exams or moving forward in their apprenticeship. He explains the final Rousseau assignment is a matter of survival. It’s about out living five others whatever means necessary, and this usually results in self initiated ‘friendly fire.’ He reaccounts everything that he can to make Ben understand that he needs to survive, that his actions were justified. To keep Ben his friend. 

By the time Hux is through with his spiel he’s reached his trees. In preparation for the climb Hux unclips the hare’s from his belt and attaches them to the shoulder strap of his pack. He begins his climb with careful steps just as the sun is beginning to sink from the cerulean sky ever so slightly. Ben remains quiet through the entire affair, only speaking once Hux has removed his pack and has settled in for the night after having devoured one of Mariposa hares.

_ “I’m real you know,”  _ Ben states. 

And Hux isn’t quite sure how to respond. Ben’s own response to the day's events and Hux’s tale is unexpected, but after everything the Cadet Captain decides to just roll with it. Never let it be said again that Hux wasn’t flexible. 

“I’m not sure if I believe you.” He says, the top of his teeth coming to nibble at the chapped skin of his lip. 

_ “I am.”  _ Ben says his tone placiating and Hux frankly isn’t sure how he feels about it. 

_ “I can show you,”  _ Ben then claims.  __

“How?” Hux whispers. 

_ “Sleep and I’ll show you.” _

So Hux does. 

He falls from Ilum with a drowsy slowness that eventually lands him in a dimly lit room on Ben’s planet. The room is circular in shape with the same sort of dirt floor as Ben’s hut, except unlike Ben’s quarters this room is windowless. A door has been carved out of one of the clay walls, but has been closed off by a thick crimson colored fabric. Overhead incense and candles burn, filling the room with sweet smoke that Hux has overtime come to associate with the act of meditation. Ben is situated in the very back of the room on a plain grass mat with his hands folded in his lap, and he is not alone. Beyond him is a small collection of his fellow classmates, all seated in the same matter, all on similar mats. They face Luke Skywalker who sits cross legged at the front of the room, before him are a collection of glass bowls of varying sizes. 

“Welcome,” Luke greets the class with a mollifying toothless smile that Hux finds irritating. The older man takes a moment to scan over all the faces in the room. “I’m glad we all could make it this morning,” he says with a pointed look in Ben’s direction. This makes the irritation in Hux boil to a fine sort of anger toward the man. 

Luke leans around the glass bowls and picks up what Hux can only describe as a thick wooden stick. With his other hand he dowses all the candles, submerging the room into a heavy darkness, that all too closely resembles how Hux spent the nights as a child, before he started dreaming. Before Ben.

“Now let us all lay back with our eyes closed and we’ll begin,” the now disembodied voice of Luke says. 

Following these directions, Ben moves his oafish form of a body to lay backward on to the mat. The process is disorienting in the dark, Hux can feel the meager contents of his stomach rolling. He can only assume Ben has closed his eyes.

For a moment in the dark Hux can only hear the faint sounds of everyone in the room breathing, the sensationation is trescending. Hux feels as if instead of lying there as Ben, he is lying  _ next  _ to him. He imagines that it's his own fingertips brushing against the rough texture of the woven blades of the grass mat, that it’s just him and Ben lying in this dark room far away from the cold. A previously unknown part of his mind supplies the odd musing that this is what it would be like to fall asleep next to Ben. The thought traitorously settles in a deeper part of Hux’s stomach to be devoured separately from the hare. He can practically feel his heart beating in an unsteady fashion at the meat and bone of his rib cage located in the body he has abandoned on Ilum for the evening. 

Then a sort of ethereal music begins to fill the room. The high notes rising and falling in waves closely related to a calm sea pushing and pulling to the sand of a far away beach. The melodic music pulls Hux further and further from the dark room filled with smoke, until he as well as Ben are no longer there. The pair of them finding themselves somewhere new entirely. 

Hux finds himself--not as Ben, but as himself--standing in what can only be described as space, and the scene before him is nothing less than breathtaking. Stars that had always been galaxies away now are clustered all around him in clumps of twinkling iridescent lights. There are also the pinpricks of distant planets, Hux is sure he’s never seen, orbiting their suns. Standing across from him in the hulking form of Ben dressed in the humble brown robes of a Jedi, and between the two of them is what appears to be a large silver harp with infinite multi colored strings that are pulsating with a sort of unnerving energy.

Hux finds himself instantly drawn to the harp, his thin fingers itching to play it. His eye’s only leave the object when Ben speaks. 

“Strange,” Ben says with a pensive face.

The sound of his low voice, for the first time projecting to Hux from outside his head, forces the Cadet Captain to peel his eyes away from the harp. His glass-green eyes lock with Ben’s brown. Hux offers a quirk of his brow as a silent prompt for Ben to elaborate.

Ben shrugs.“This is not how I expected you to look.” 

Though he is no stranger to comments about his appearance (thin as a slip of paper and just as weak and useless, his father had always said) Hux still bristles at Ben’s words. His shoulders tense and his fingers wrap natural into white knuckled fists. 

“Disappointed?” He challenges. 

“No! It’s just...It’s just...I’ve never seen hair that color before.” Ben bables with his hands held out in a pacifying motion. 

Hux squints at him. Ben’s words sound like a hasty retreat if Hux has ever heard one, but the curiosity of where they are causes him not to call the other boy out. So he un-clenches his fist and falls into a relaxed stance once more. 

“Where are we?” he asks Ben.

“It’s hard to explain,” Ben replies with a pinched expression. He approaches the harp with slow steps, Hux does not wait for an invitation to follow. 

The pair of them stand before the harp, the energy radiating off of it is all the more pliable at this distance. Each of the multi-colored strings seem to glow with an iridescences that's otherworldly, especially to someone who’s essentially grown up in places void of natural light besides that of distant stars. Hux watches as Ben’s thicker fingers ghost over the infinite number of strings. 

“This is the Force, physically manifested as I see it and am able to best understand it,” Ben explains, still plucking at the strings, and Hux swears he can hear the music they produce. The music of light. Hux watches those fingers move over each string, until they pause on a pair of strings. “This is you,” he says pointing to a pale green string that's so very close to the color of Hux’s eyes. His finger then moves away from Hux’s string and points to the intersecting brown one “and this is me.” 

Hux immediately understands the significance of Ben’s words: this is me and this is you, and we’re both real. He convinces himself to be satisfied with this for now, though there will always be a nagging part in his head that refuses to believe Ben’s existence without a physical manifestation of him outside of dreams.

Hux leans closer to inspect his own string, how it’s curiously wrapped around Ben’s in a way that reminds Hux of the ordered chaos of his Mathiar’s knitting basket, remembering how some of their thick threads would become tangled together to the point of hopelessness.

“Why are they like that? Why are they tangled?” Hux asks, lifting his eyes from the strings to look at Ben. 

“I think it’s for the same reason why we dream of each other's lives...I think it’s a Force bond of some sort...except…” Ben trails off, his eyes shifting away from Hux. 

Hux straightens to his full height to level Ben with a quizzical stare.“Except what?”

Ben begins to crack his knuckles, a pensive wrinkled forming in the center of his brow. “Except...It looks different... _ feels  _ different than how Luke has described them to be in class.”

“Different how?” Hux asks, fearing the worst.

Ben ceases cracking his knuckles, brings a hand to his mouth and coughs. His eyes are shifty when he mutters “It feels...deeper...more...precious.” 

And just the implications of those words is enough to make the heat of a blush bloom across the back of Hux’s neck as well as on the tips of his ears. He tucks his hands together to rest at the small of his back. He’s not really sure how to respond to Ben’s independently formed conclusion. As a result, it’s awkwardly silent for a moment before Ben once again feels the need to continue.

“Including the dreams, our bond lets us share things, experience things, see things like memories.” 

“Memories?” Hux echos like a question.

Ben makes a noise of affirmation, “like the one with your Father today...he...he was cruel to you.” 

Hux whips his head away from the harp to look at Ben once more, whom he finds has been staring at him as well. “How-” he begins to say before everything clicks together like an unpleasant puzzle. 

He remembers the feeling of fingers in his head, how they never truly left. It all makes sense. All along Ben’s been peeking around the inner workings of Hux’s skull and taking his fill. Finding entertainment on the truly depressing affair that was his childhood. Lord knows what else he might have found; Hux’s innermost fears, his weaknesses, all sorts of soft pokable spots for Ben needle and scratch at until they  _ bleed.  _

Hux feels his face falling into a sneer, tension seeping into his back as well as his shoulders. He takes a step away from Ben, who looks at him with plain confusion. 

“Hux?” Ben asks. 

“You’ve been in my head?” Hux spits. 

“Well...no...not intentionally, I’ve only seen what you’ve shown me.” Ben takes a step towards Hux, who takes a step back.

“I didn’t show you anything,” Hux says firmly.

“Yes you did” Ben counters, voice edging towards irritation. 

“You’re delusional! I haven’t shown you anything. You’ve just been picking through my head like a toddler who doesn’t know when to keep their busy hands out of where they don’t belong.” Hux spits the words hoping they land in Ben’s skin like knives.

“I have not! I only see what you show me!” Ben shouts.

“I haven’t shown you anything!”

Ben scoffs. “Impossible! When there’s a bond between two Force users-”

“I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“A Forcer user.”

Ben blinks at Hux surprised. He stands still near the harp looking as if he’s not sure what to do with his hands. “You’re null?” He asks

And there is it. 

A balantent reminder of the sort of power Hux will never have, no matter how hard he works, there will always be somebody  _ more _ . Somebody  _ gifted  _ in ways he never will be. Normally Hux can keep a level head about this, and is able to remind himself that even without a loaded hand he can still play the game and play it well. Has been able to allow countless taunts, slurs, and insults to roll off his shoulders like drops of acidic rain that will never burn his skin.

But he’s already furious over the disregard for his own privacy, that Ben had been running around his head because he felt entitled to due to some sort of mystic bond that neither of them understand. That and there’s something about the way the word  _ null  _ passes from Ben’s lips, how it sounds too close to  _ dull _ .

All of it coming from Ben kriffing hurts and Hux loathes him for it.

“Stay out of my head Ben,” Hux says before forcing himself awake.

It is still night time when Hux’s eyes fly open, above him the dark sky of Ilum is vacant. He still feels the days fatigue in his bones but has no desire to go back to sleep. He sits awake in the tree until the distance sun rises slowly painting the still white world with cold light.

_ How quickly tides turn  _ Hux thinks squinting at the harsh light. 

_ Sol 16.  _

The sol after, Hux ventures from his tree once again, It’s colder than it has been in previous days so Hux elects to wrap one of the blankets around him like a cloak. It helps to stave off the chill. 

Ben tries to speak with him the morning after the room of stars; tries to explain, to justify, and Hux might have been inclined to listen if Ben hadn’t gone about it by speaking to him like a toddler. Hux was Force null, not stupid. 

So he ignores Ben.

Ben realizes that his silence has not been the listening sort, around the same time Hux finds a small river not far from his tree. Hux removes the pack from his back with a great heaving swing, letting momentum of his movements carry the pack into the snow near the river bank. 

_ “Hux have you been listening to me at all?”  _ Ben asks him.

Hux digs through his pack until he finds his water skin. With it in hand he crouches at the river. He ignores Ben.

_ “Hux _ . _ ” _

Hux dunks the skin under the water, allowing it to fill with cool water. When his hand grows cold Hux removes his hand and tightly screws the cap back on the water skin. He continues to ignore Ben. 

_ “Hux.”  _ Ben grates in his head.

Still Hux does not answer. Instead he rises to his feet. The action is slow, his knees creak the whole way up. Once again standing Hux finds himself staring at the running water, his mind briefly wandering to the last time he’s had a shower. Hux is suddenly acutely aware of the tacky feeling of his uniform on his skin. 

_ “Come on Hux, I’m trying to apologize,”  _ Ben sighs.

Hux tightens his grip on his water skin. “No, you’re not,” he picks up his bag and throws the water skin inside, “you’re just trying to pacify me and I frankly find it insulting.”

_ “What?”  _

Hux zips up his pack and hauls it over his shoulders. Each quick motion is filled with hostile irritation. He stares at the river, aggressively readjusting his rifle. “You mystics always think you’re so much better, that those who aren’t as  _ gifted _ are beneath you-”

_ “No _ -” Ben begins to scoff but Hux who is once more absolutely seething, cuts Ben off.

“--and thus don’t have an inkling of a grasp on the Force, therefore you precieve them to be incompetent and this makes you feel entitled to shvit, like their memories.” Hux spits into the wind and finds himself wishing it was Ben’s face. 

_ “Krif you!”  _ Ben shouts into Hux’s ears.

The absolute force of his voice has Hux collapsing to his knees, body complete wrought with pain. His vision swims, turning the babbling brook before him into some sort of aquatic hypnotism that makes Hux’s stomach roll. His hands clutch at the snow as he tries to get his bearings. Then there comes an uncomfortable warm pooling from inside his ears. Briefly Hux fears Ben has turned his brains to mush, and the warmth is in fact the puddle remains of its matter. This is disproven when Hux raises a shaky hand to his left ear swipe at some of the liquid that’s begun to ooze from it. When he holds it up to his face he finds his still foggy vision is now swimming with the deep maroon, near black, color of his blood. 

_ “Are-are you bleeding?”  _ Ben whimpers. 

Hux doesn’t answer, he fears that if he opens his mouth he’ll vomit. 

_ “I-I’m sorry,”  _ Ben apologizes sounding appalled, then he’s gone.

Hux cleans his stained hand in the old snow by the river. 

_ Sol 17. _

Hux and Ben don’t speak for three days. In the quiet Hux catches, skins, and cooks four more of the hare-like creatures. He hates how lonely he feels.

_ Sol 19. _

On the morning of the 19th sol Hux awakes with a splitting headache and phlegm in his chest, both feel incredibly unpleasant. He attempts to sit up inorder to fish the water skin from his pack, to hopefully clear his throat and maybe help alleviate his headache. But when he picks up his head a fraction, all at once the idea of moving any further becomes extremely unappealing. Hux becomes acutely aware of how his limbs ache, to the point that even the thought of lifting his hand is exhausting work. So Hux abandons the idea for water and settles back against the tree, wrapping his various layers around his body. Though no wind blows, Hux’s body becomes racked with shivers. 

It’s Ben who points out the obvious in the end.  _ “You’re sick,”  _ he states.

Hux sniffles loudly and briefly debates on continuing to ignore Ben, but he decides against it. Though it’s only been a few days, he’s sick of loneliness and doesn’t feel much like being angry anymore. 

“It was bound to happen eventually, I haven’t had a proper shower in nearly a month...I just wish the rest of them would kill each other off already, so I could get off this kriffing planet.” Hux ends his sentence with a hacking cough. 

_ “Why don’t you go find them? Kill them yourself.”  _ Ben suggests. His tone is not unkind but rather curious. 

“My ambitions are best achieved by patience, empires aren’t built in days but years.” Another coughing fit racks Hux’s body, he tightens his hold on his blankets. “Besides I rather not be trekking around the frozen wood like this.” 

Ben hums in Hux’s ear.  _ “That’s fair,”  _ he says. 

Then there’s a sort of silence once more, the only sound filling the air is Hux’s wet coughs accompanied by sniffing. Hux’s eyes begin to droop, the fatigue of illness washing over his body, threatening to drown him. He fights to stay awake. 

_ “You should sleep,”  _ Ben whispers the sound warm in Hux’s ear and not for the first time the Cadet Captain is struck with the desire to have Ben there with him, though the accompanying want to be held is new. Hux blames the sickness.

“I don’t want to,” Hux says honestly. He doesn’t want to sleep for the fear of never waking up. 

_ “You’re safe.”  _ Ben reassures Hux, and he really wants to believe him.

But Hux still resists the pull of sleep, though every fiber of his being is fighting him on it.

_ “Come on Hux.”  _ Ben whispers again and this time his words are accompanied with the touch of an invisible hand. The touch is warm as invisible fingers run through his greasy hair.

“Is this you?” He croaks, his own voice sounding far away. The touch feels like a pleasant fever dream. 

Ben hums in affirmation.  _ “We’ve been practicing force projections and...I wanted to try it long distance, _ ” Ben pauses and the next question is thoughtful murmur, _ “is it helping?” _

Hux coughs into the crook of his elbow and mutters a soft “yes.”

Hux finds himself leaning into the touch. It’s gentle and kind and strikes Hux with the unwelcomed question as to when he’d been last touched so tenderly: Mathair, is the answer he is supplied with. All at once his mind is plagued with memories of his Mathair, who always handled him with such care with clean work-worn hands. Hux feels his eyes filling with tears; he doesn’t want to be sick, he doesn’t want another meal of nutrition paste or tough hare, and he doesn’t wanna spend one more second in the cold. Hux wants off this planet and he wants a hot shower and to sleep in an actual bed. He wants to go home. 

Frustrated Hux scrubs at the tears in his eyes. Ben blessedly doesn’t say anything about the crying. Instead he apologizes. 

_ “I’m sorry,”  _ Ben says, continuing to stroke Hux’s hair, _ “I made assumptions...and that was not...good...and I’m sorry about the memories”  _

Before he can respond Hux falls into a sneezing fit, which then naturally transforms into a coughing fit that forces him to retrieve his water skin. After a few gulps of water and once he’s resettled in Hux says, “it's fine...just don’t do it again, I don’t always forgive so easy.” 

Ben huffs a laugh.  _ “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”  _ he says in a way that indicates the words have fallen easily from a grin. 

Hux finds himself smiling. Then his eyelids begin drooping and there is very little will left in him to fight the pull of sleep once more. Ben’s encouragement doesn’t help matters, especially not when he begins to sing softly into Hux’s ear. 

Succumbing to defeat, Hux lets his eyes drift closed. “What are you singing?” 

_ “A lullaby,”  _ Ben says.

Hux continues to listen and then laughs. “No it kriffing isn’t, that's a Chandrillian pop song.” 

_ “No it's not,”  _ Ben laughs.

“Yes it is.”

_ “Shut up and go to sleep already.”  _

Hux does. He falls asleep with a smile on his face and the lyrics of a pop song poorly sung in his head. 

For a while it's dark and then he awakes in a dream. 

Ben is slouched over a wooden desk which appears to be buried in the recesses of a library lined in proper books with crooked spins bound together with yellowing twine. Next to the stack of thick books is a candle settled nicely into a brass dish. Before him a book is opened to a page covered thick in words written in a language Hux can’t understand. 

_ “What are you doing up?”  _ Hux wants to ask Ben, but can’t. He isn’t able to communicate mentally in the way Ben can. 

“I didn’t want to be asleep at the same time as you...I'm not sure if it's connected but before this...before you, I used to dream of darkness...I don’t want to go back to that.” Ben explains, seeming to sense Hux’s curiosity. He then flips the page, leading to more words Hux doesn’t understand. 

Hux watches passively as Ben continues to flip the pages, reading over the information intently. He wonders what the other boy is searching for in the ancient text, it’s obviously something less than koser given Ben has chosen to do his research under the cover of night. 

“I talked with Luke earlier this evening, about our bond...he was less than helpful, only cautioned me against continued relations with you...he thinks you’re dark...that what we have is dark, that it defies the Jedi Code in some way, but didn’t explain further...which got me curious.” Ben murmurs, closing the first book and picking up another. He flips through this one with the same amount of diligent searching as he did with the previous. 

About mid-way through the second book Ben pauses to rapidly skim over the page, eagerly digesting the information he finds there.

_ What did you find?  _ Hux wants to ask. 

In the end he doesn’t have to because Ben tells him. 

“I think I’ve figured out the significance of our bond, but not why Luke wants me to sever it” Ben says after a while. 

He points to a short word located somewhere in the middle of the page, he squints at it. “This text, as well as others I’ve found, call the bond  _ caim _ ,” he says, eyes continuing down the page. “It says here that it's some sort of special...profound bond between two people...usually the bond allows you to share lives, thoughts, memories, dreams with the person you’re connected with…” 

Ben pauses and stares at the page for a long while, he then makes a thoughtful sort of sound, “these are the qualities of a typical Force bond...why is this located in the forbidden texts then?” 

He flips through the rest of the book, he discards it roughly on the ground when he finds no answers. Ben picks up another book, skims the pages rapidly before stopping once again. He reads through what on the page, a small sound of realization emits from his mouth as all the pieces of an unknown puzzle fits together. He points on the pages, and begins to read aloud:

_ “Caim bonds are naturally occuring instances of unification between two life forms from the beginning of their existence and remain until their deaths. This sort of bond is very similar to the typical Force bond, however it has a special distinction from the typical Force bond based on its potential to occur between a Force-user and a Force-null, on the rare occasion. A caim bond is also more powerful for the sort of selfish love it inspires between it’s recipients, that has led to a number of passion driven events that do not necessarily benefit the greater population of the galaxy. This is due to either of the bond members' willingness to essentially burn the galaxy for the sake of their other half, that the caim bond is considered dark by nature. For nothing that inspires such derivative self fulling passion can allow one to truly know peace with the Force, therefore any persons dutifully following the Jedi Code should sever their bond inorder to reach the desired status of true peace.” _

Ben stops reading. “This,” he begins “doesn’t make any sense, what I feel for you...it isn’t dark...doesn’t feel dark...I only know peace when I’m with you.”

And  _ that _ sounds like something close to a confession. 

Hux isn’t sure what to say to this--not that he can say anything at the moment--other than perhaps that he returns Ben’s sentiments. What he carries in his heart for Ben is nothing less than a sort of hopeful juvenile love that is slowly turning into something that could be all consuming. 

Hux watches and Ben’s large hands flex against the page, his thumb working to crack the knuckles of the rest of his thick fingers. Hux is struck with a sort of longing that seems to reappear every time he is reminded of the distance between them.

“Hux,” Ben begins with a whisper, but before he can say anything more Hux is pulled from the dream by the sound of gun fire followed by a flock of birds retreating. 

Even with the hamming of his heart, Hux’s eyes are slow to open. On the forest floor below, he can hear the sound of someone crunching through the snow with heavy steps. Hux slowly shifts in his hammock to peer over the edge at the ground below, where much to his surprise he finds the bulky figure of Fukes. 

Fukes stalks in heavy movements with his rifle out in front of him, the blaster swings out in front of him in a lazy scan of the forest Hux has made camp in. He looks like shvit warmed over a cold fire; black hair now longer with regulation and shiny with grease, dark eyes sunken into the hollow of his skull, his clothes are ragged and stained with blood. Hux wonders whose blood it is, he prays there’s one less body to worry about.

_ Not that you look any better,  _ Hux reminds himself with the weight of an unkept red beard promit on his angular face, and slick strand of grotesque hair falling into shallow eyes. 

Fukes treads as softly as he can and there’s an unsteadiness in his posture. Even from his high perch Hux can see how the other boy’s hands shake in such a way that it is no fault of the cold. There’s also a caginess in his eyes as he scans the tree line, a sort of paranoia easily developed during prolonged periods of isolation.

And they called  _ him  _ weak willed. What would High Command say now if they saw Fukes, the ideal sort of soldier on paper, wandering the frozen landscape like a ghost? Shaking as violent as a leaf in a storm. 

_ Oh how the mighty fall  _ Hux thinks with a weak smirk and a cough stifled by his hand.

A large part of Hux wants to sit back and watch Fukes succumb to the will of the elements, but a smarter part not currently plagued with a fever knows the only way to ensure Fukes dies is to kill him himself. 

So Hux gently positions his blaster over the edge of the hammock, quietly switching the safety off. The phasma cells hum to life and the scope lights up a cheery green, Hux peaks through the glasses and easily finds Fukes’ shivering form. He fires the shot, it pierces Fukes’ neck like a hot knife slicing through butter. 

Blood begins to spurt like a fountain from the tanned flesh of his neck, Fukes’ broad hand flies to the wound to spot the spurting blood. His efforts are fruitless, the blood pouring from him like a morbid fountain. He stumbles a few steps before inevitably falling backward into the snow, where he lies flat, a halo of blood slowly pooling around his bulky figure. 

His dark eyes stare skyward and happen to find Hux’s. Those eyes harden with a cocktail of hate and disgust, Fuke’s lips turn into a sneer.

“Half-light,” Fukes’ spits.

Hux shoots him three more times for the slur. Despite the intent, the action is void of emotion. With Fukes’ lifeless body bleeding out below, Hux settles back against his tree with a cough. 

His eyes begin to drop on their own accord, his body valently pulling him toward sleep once more. At first Hux fights it, but then the warmth of Ben’s invisible hand runs through his scalp, blunt fingernails combing through his greasy red hair. So Hux lets his eyes fall shut, allowing himself to be carried to sleep by the caresses of a boy who is far, far away. 

_ Sol 23.  _

Hux is still sick, but his condition has mildly improved since the 19th sol, enough so that he exits his tree to take care of Fukes corpse. Unfortunately there is very little on Fukes’ person that he can salvage as well as use. Hux manages to save the gloves as well as the socks, having to pry them from the deceased with a little elbow grease. However, after he inspects both articles of clothing Hux evidently decides he doesn’t want to wear anything he’s had to  _ pry  _ off a corpse. So he tucks both the socks as well as the gloves into the front pocket of Fukes coat. 

Hux then stands over the large corpse, weighing the pros and cons of dragging Fukes’ away from his camp. If he does it could lead a trail back to him which would compromise his thus far mostly secure positioning, however Hux also doesn't like the idea of bunking with a dead man. In the end he decides to compromise with himself and decides to bury Fukes in a shallow snow grave three trees down from his own. 

With this in mind, Hux then begins to drag Fukes body towards its final resting place. The task proves to be more difficult than it sounded in theory, for Fukes is not small by any stretch of the means. So it takes some time for Hux to successfully drag the corpse to its destined tree, where Hux drops him. He then begins piling snow on top of the other boy, the act turning his fingers numb even through their gloves. 

At least Ben seems to be in good spirits today. Thus far he’s spent the better part of Hux’s morning prattling in his ear with a sort of chipper tone about topics ranging from everything and nothing. Hux welcomes the constant string of dialogue, finds Ben’s voice a ceaseless comfort.

“What’s got you in such high spirits?” Hux asks after a while of burying and listening. He is amused to find the other boy's answer is so stupidly simple. 

_ “We had Diragos for lunch today,”  _ Ben says.

“What on earth are Diragos?” Hux huffs, heavy more snow onto Fukes to cover his torso. 

_ “It’s a tortilla filled with meats, cheese, vegetables and other spices and it's toasted until everything melts together.”  _ Ben explains.

“Sounds heavenly” Hux says mildly, his mouth watering at the idea of anything besides the tough hare meat, nutrition paste, and nutrition bars he’s been surviving off of for the past month. 

Ben makes a noise of aftermation. “ _ They’re my favorite,”  _ he says and then will very little, _ “I’ll make them for you sometime.” _

Hux slows his digging to let the words sink in. To fully absorb the offer that's being made, to decipher the implication behind it. They’ve talked very little of their caim bond since the night in the library, the heaviness of it and its ever omnipresence, but neither of them really pushed towards the idea of an ‘after this.’ Since that evening everything that has occured between them has felt a little like a step in a strange long distance courtship, where both parties seemed to know everything and nothing about each other. Like whatever they have is meant to grow deeper. Meant to be infinite.

Or that could all just be the romantic in Hux talking, having been bottled fed by his Mathiars tales. After all, isn’t it one thing to say you feel at peace with someone opposed to being in love with them?

But then Ben’s fingers caress Hux’s hand, like he is trying to slot them together, and Hux is forced to evaluate everything once again. 

Eventually Hux’s silence stretches to an awkward sort, it’s presence meant to force his hand. Hux licks his lips and makes a decision. 

He flexes the fingers of the hand where he feels Ben’s touch, and attempts to clumsily ensnare Ben’s Force hand. It sort of works, he can feel the imaginary presence of Ben’s fingers wrapped between his. With Ben’s help, their fingers slot together and it's a grand sort of sensation. 

“You can cook?” Hux askes, attempting to sound casual. It doesn’t work very well, his voice cracks in a way it hasn’t done since he was fourteen. He can practically feel Ben’s smile pressed to his ear, but thankful the other boy doesn’t laugh. 

_ “Had to learn how. I fended for myself alot growing up.”  _ Ben explains, and Hux can tell there’s some baggage there but he won’t prod. He trusts Ben to tell him in his own time. 

“You’ll cook for me?” He asks instead. He begins to half-heartedly kick snow over the exposed bits of Fukes that remain. 

_ “Of course, everyday if you wanted me too,”  _ Ben murmurs, his tone genuine, thumb stroking Hux’s own. 

Hux feels his face pull into a soft smile, and a pleased blush crawls up his face. He kicks some more snow onto Fukes scarecly covered corpse, he releases something close to a long suffering sigh. 

_ “He’s buried enough, let's go for a walk.”  _ Ben suggests with a squeeze to Hux’s hand.  __

“This isn’t a leisure trip Ben,” Hux scoffs but turns away from Fukes’ body nonetheless. 

_ “Of course not, we would vacation somewhere better and with less snow.” _

_ Sol 27. _

_ “What does half-light mean?”  _ Ben asks one afternoon.

Hux sat at the base of his tree and was in the middle of skinning another hare he caught that morning, when the question came and it’s enough to make him drop his knife in the snow. The slur settles heavy on Hux’s ear and having it come from Ben brings about an unpleasant feeling in Hux’s stomach, despite the intent of the question. 

_ “Hux?”  _ Ben asks when Hux doesn’t respond. 

Hux sighs, picks up his knife, and resumes skinning the hare. “It’s mean ‘half-alive’ or ‘half-human,’ it's used as a derogatory slur on Arkanis to describe someone of mixed blood. Native Arkanians are known for their blood, specifically its maroon near black color. My Mathair was a native Arkanian, I was born as a result of an affair my Father had with her. If being a bastard son of the commandant wasn’t enough...needless to say when my classmates found out my mixed blood status on top of that, they took to calling me...that.” 

Ben’s silent a moment then he snarls.  _ “That’s despicable, I’m glad they’re dead, I’m only sorry I didn’t kill them myself.”  _

“I’m capable of handling things myself Ben,” Hux points out.

_ “I know I just,”  _ Ben sighs,  _ “you shouldn’t have to...fight the world alone...it sounds like such a lonely task.”  _ There’s another thoughtful pause from Ben, and then there’s the presence of warm fingers at the nape of Hux’s neck, stroking soothing patterns into Hux’s skin.  _ “When I’m with you I don’t want you to think you have to, I don’t want you to feel so alone...you’re my best friend...my  _ caim. _ ”  _

Hux stabs his knife into the snow. “I know and I’m grateful and I hope you understand I feel the same in regards to you,” he says earnestly reaching up to grasp at Ben’s invisible hand. He feels the warmth of what he presumed to be Ben’s other arm wrapping around his waist, Hux is then cradled to an invisible chest and he feels at peace there in the snow in the invisible arms of his long distance lover. 

He’s never been more content.

_ Sol 25. _

_ “Tell me about your Mathair?”  _ Ben asks another afternoon.

“What do you want to know?”

_ “Everything.” _

So Hux tells him everything, under a gray sky heavy with the threat of new snowfall. It feels good to talk about his Mathair, to be able to admit he misses her to someone who won’t fault him for it. 

_ Sol 26.  _

“What about your parents, what were they like?” Hux asks early one morning while he is crouched over the river bank filling his water skin. 

_ “They weren’t really parents,”  _ Ben says.

“Tell me about them?”

_ “What do you want to know?” _

“Everything.”

So Ben tells him everything, his voice a deep calm accompanied by the cheerinees of the babbling brook. 

_ Sol 30. _

_ “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  _ Ben asks him one early morning, as they watch the sunrise at the base of Hux’s tree through his eyes. Through the Force Ben’s thick arms are wrapped around him from behind in an intimate embrace Hux leans into easily.

“I want to be Admiral of the First Order Galactic Navy,” Hux states simply, the answer is something he can recite by heart. “What about you?” He asks Ben.

Hux feels the other boy shrug through the Force.  _ “I’m not sure,”  _ he says and then there's a heavy pause  _ “but I don’t think I want to be a Jedi.”  _

“That’s fine,” Hux says because it is. He strokes the presence of Ben’s arm in what he hopes is a soothing pattern. He hears Ben release a sigh into the deepest part of Hux’s inner ear. It carries the weight of many people’s expectations for a boy who is obviously gifted but has never been allowed to chart his own path. 

_ “What does an Admiral do?” _ Ben asks, genuinely curious.

“Well they basically lead and command the entirety of the Galactic Navy,” Hux explains.

Ben hums,  _ “sounds right up your alley.”  _ Then there’s a thoughtful sort of pause before Ben asks,  _ “would you go to war?” _

“Yes,” Hux affirms, “I want to help bring order to the galaxy and the only way to do this is through war, you can’t overflow unjust powers with peace and treaties, you need a great upset of ideas.”

_ “I don’t want you to go to war,”  _ Ben murmurs. 

“Ben-” Hux starts.

_ “I want you here with me.”  _ Ben states firmly, his grip tightening around Hux ever so slightly. Then softer he says, “ _ I want you safe.” _

Hux shutters a sigh, the fury of butterflies in his stomach beating away in an act of great carnivorous devouring. He breathes the hopeful propsisition “then come with me and keep me safe.”

_ “Okay.” _

_ Sol 34. _

Hux shares his first kiss with Ben. The other boy's lips a mere chaste press against his own, accomplished through Ben’s near masterful use of the Force. It makes his entire being tingle with a pleasure never felt before that moment, and all Hux wants to do every moment after is kiss Ben again, and again.

_ Sol 40. _

In the afternoon Hux finds the body of Xna faced down in the frigid water of the river, where it drifted lazily past. Her short dark hair was frozen in a way that reminded Hux of inverted icicles and her heavy coat fanned out around her body like a pair of wings. 

_ “Another dead? How many does that leave?”  _ Ben asks.

“Two.” Hux replies flicking the safety off his blaster rifle. She looks fresh so Hux decides to scout the surrounding woods for signs of his remaining two classmates. 

_ Sol. 44 _

“I love you,” Hux says on the night of the 44th sol. just as he is about to settle into sleep. The words leave a nervous sort of sweat on his palms, that he rubs against the abhorrent fabric of his trousers. His fuzzy feeling teeth nibble at the flakey skin of his teeth, until the flesh turns raw. He hears Ben breathing in his ear, it's a shuttering sort of sound that raises concern in Hux’s heart. 

“Ben?” Hux croaks.

_ “I love you too,”  _ Ben chokes, the presence of tears obvious in his voice.

“Don’t cry, my darling,” Hux murmurs, wishing to be able to pull Ben into his arms, to run comforting fingers through his dark hair. 

_ “I wish I was with you, or you were with me, I just wish we were together in body.”  _ Ben sobs.

“Me too, A ghra.” Hux says in what he hopes is a soothing tone. Then he feels the overwhelming warmth of Ben all around him, in his skin down to the very marrow of his bones, holding him in a sweet caress. Hux becomes overwhelmed with emotions, both his and Ben’s. A couple of tears escape his tired eyes. He wraps his willow like arms around his narrow frame. 

“Per angusta ad augusta,” Hux mutters.

_ “What does that mean?”  _ Ben asks, voice still wet. 

“It's something my Mathair used to say during...trying times, it means ‘through difficulties to honors’” Hux says.

_ “Per angusta ad augusta,”  _ Ben murmurs.

They remain quiet until Hux falls slowly into a deep sleep. When he dreams he’s confronted with the sight of Ben’s tear stained face, it’s heartbreaking. 

_ Sol. 50 _

A handful of nights later Hux falls asleep into the crescendo of a particularly volatile argument between Ben and Luke. They stand in the library facing each other with tension in their shoulders and hands gripping the sabers holstered at their hips. 

“You’ve got to make an effort Ben!” Luke shouts taking aggravated steps towards Ben. “You can’t keep carrying on with this attitude, sleeping until you please, and deliberately disobeying your instructors so that you may carry on as you like.”

Ben flexes his hands and says nothing as Luke carries on. 

“Each day you continue to slack off and neglect your training, your permit the darkness to devour you until no light remains and all that will be left is the decay, as is what happened with the Lord Vader you worship so.” Luke latches onto Ben’s wide shoulders with a white knuckle grip. “You’re too powerful to carry on as you are. You must be better. You must remember the code.” Luke asserts with a ferocity that causes the dirt beneath the pair to shift, small stones rumbling with poorly quelled rage. 

“Kriff the code,” Ben spits shoving Luke off of him. “Your precious code is shavit!”

Ben shoves the books off a nearby table with one sure swipe of his arm. The books fall to the floor in a series of heavy thumps, kicking up dust in their wake. His chest heaves with anger.

“Ben!”

“Your code would have me ignore my force bond! My  _ caim _ ! For what purpose?” Ben shouts, the books on the floor whip open, their pages beginning to flap wildly.

“You’re-you’re still speaking to him? That boy Cadet?” 

“Yes.”

Luke’s face grows dark, arms falling to his sides. “You must sever this bond at once, before it gets any deeper.” 

“No.”

“Ben! The concept of Caim is inherently dark! It would cause you to have unnecessary attachments! to harbor emotions that will cloud the mind as well as your heart! Which will hinder you from knowing the force in a level of intimacy that will allow you to atlast reach true peace--” Luke shouts wild eyed.

“I know no peace without him!”

Luke is silent at the outburst.

“Without every emotion that racks my body just by the sound of his voice. My very being is in torument the nights I sleep and instead of the sight of his hands I find only darkness. There is no peace for me without him and everything he makes me feel.” Ben implores, the books at his feet settling.

“If he makes you feel this passionately, then he must be dark Ben, you must sever yourself from him,” Luke says grimly. 

“Never.”

There’s a tense silence, then Luke speaks once more.

“Right then, I’ll do it for you.” Luke ignites his lightsaber, he begins to approach Ben’s with heavy steps. 

“No!” Ben growls his own hand fumbling with the saber on his belt.

Hux awakes to the sharp sound of gunfire in the distance, scattering a flock of birds, with Ben’s name on his lips. His hand flies to his mouth to trap the sound of a scream that begs to come out, the pinpricks of tears are settled in the corners of his eyes. His heart hammers hard against the wall of his chest. He silently damns Luke Skywalker to all the hells, while also praying to all the heavens for Ben to pull through. Hux fears his heart might shatter if forced into loneliness once more.

_ Sol 52. _

Hux’s world has grown quiet and his nights once again dark. 

_ Sol 60. _

The night is quiet and Hux’s mind is quieter.

Ben’s prolonged absence and the nights spent in the naked dark have convinced Hux that Ben is no longer with him, that Luke Skywalker has separated them with the unforgiving heat of his precious saber. 

In the light of a new moon, Hux vows the minute he is off this god forsake planet to cut down Luke Skywalker and rescue Ben from that wretched pit of a planet. Once they’re together again, he’ll hide Ben in the depths of the First Order where his skill with the Force will surely flourish. Then Hux will fastly climb the ranks and work tirelessly alongside their Supreme Leader to dismantle the very Republic that celebrates the depraved meretes of the Jedi. 

Then after, when order to the galaxy has been restored, Hux will marry Ben under the reclaimed cliffs of Arkanis by the torrid sea. Where they’ll live together when they’re not needed on base. Hux dreams of the children they’ll raise that will be there to bury Hux and Ben in the ground when the time comes. 

It is a nice day-dream that Hux holds onto, until the cold fingers of darkness strangle him into submission. 

_ Sol 75.  _

Hux awakes weeks later to a series of minor tears in his hammock that have him immediately concerned, he knows if they are not dealt with promptly these tears will lead to disaster. Hux contimplates replacing the tent with one of the rain tarps he’s poached, but the material feels so flimsy in his hand, that he decides to take his chances with finding a new tent. Hux descends from his tree with practiced ease, his boots crashing into the snow when he reaches the bottom. 

After some deliberation, Hux decides to take his chances with finding Mariposa’s tent, given he vaguely knows where she set up camp. He begins trekking in the direction which he remembers finding Mariposa. The snow is still thick as it was sol 1. and Hux is forced to think about how everything and nothing has changed on Illum. 

Before he reaches Mariposa’s clearing he comes across the body of Hanney strung up in a tree, hanging by a noose fashioned from her belt. She’s been gutted by the sureful swipes of a trained hand, her intestines hang from her sliced up corpse like bloody strands of pasta would form the gaping maw of a great beast. Her eyes have been gauged from her pretty skull and some of her teeth have been pried away from the tender flesh of her gums.

COME GET ME HALF-LIGHT: is spelled out in blood in the snow below Hanney’s body.

Hux knows the hand writing. It’s the same brutish blocky script that had spelled out “Half-light Hag”, across the mattress of his bunk freshman year and then “Navve Lover,” his sophomore year. The same hands that had torn apart Hanney and used her blood for ink, had created bruises across Hux’s own alabaster flesh numerous times in the years prior. 

The sinister face of Dame Kane enters Hux’s mind’s inner eye.

Hux swings his rifle to cradle it in front of him. With an easy flick of his thumb he releases the safety. When a rifle doesn’t give it’s usual whirl of life, Hux inspects the machine tip to tail. He soon concludes a piece of the blaster's inner mechanism malfunction and Hux has nothing to fix it. Hux throws his rifle into the bloodied snow and releases a spew of colorful curses his Mathair invertedly taught him.

“Fine,” he says blandly after his fit. He unsheathes his vibroblade and walks onward, ready to finish this. 

It doesn’t take long for Hux to figure out the true direction of Kane’s tromping tracks. It's a short walk through the forest before Hux doesn’t so much as find Kane, but rather meets up with him. 

Their paths cross in another one of the forest’s numerous clearings and Kane stands before Hux, a weathered figure tall in all of his aryan perfection that’s wrought with the sort of unhinged cruelty that even Emperor Palpatine himself would have found worrisome. 

“You look like shavit,” Kane grins toying with the blade in his hand.

Hux levels him with a sneer and spits on the ground. 

Then Kane charges Hux with little preamble. He runs with yellowing teeth bared and clunky movements influenced by his hulking mass. 

Hux automatically shifts his weight to his toes and widens his stance, hand shifting his grip on his blade as he waits for Kane to make the first strike.

When he’s closed the distance between them, Kane aims for Hux’s neck and swings his blade. There is blood lust in his crisp blue eyes, the same sort of furying that Hux knows is reflected in his own.

Hux is quick to dodge the strike, ducking low and pivoting around Kane’s hulking form. Hux’s grip tightens around the handle of his blade and then he slashes at the other boy’s hamstring. The cut he leaves in Kane’s flesh is shallow, but it still bleeds and ignites further fury. 

Kane turns around, roaring a tremendous guttural sound. Hux back-steps with nimble movements increasing the space between them. Kane follows him with those same lumbering movements, taking wider steps to keep up with Hux. 

With each step Kane swings his knife, aiming for all sorts of fatile blows. Hux’s quicker steps help him dodge the blows and land a few of his own, only a few nicks here and there but his Mathair always said patience is a virtue. Then Hux's boot catches on a root hidden in the snow causing him to tumble backwards, landing him flat on his back with the wind knocked out of him. 

Kane is on him in seconds. He stomps on Hux’s chest with a heavy step, snow and pain seeping into Hux’s skin through layers of ragged uniform. He struggles under the weight of Kane's boot, but it's to no avail. Hux may be quicker, but Kane has at least 40 pounds on him. 

With Hux pinned under the weight of his boot Kane grins a terrible sort of way, all teeth and murderous intent. He crouches down low enough until he’s level with Hux’s ear. “Worthless,” Kane spits and then sinks his knife into Hux’s side. 

Hux cries out, the warmth of his already blood pooling out of him and into the snow.

“Half-light and only half-there,” Kane snarls, twisting the blade making a sick sound of satisfaction when the action pulls a pained gasp from the back of Hux’s throat. “I’ve seen you wandering around these parts, talking to yourself, touching yourself, calling the air around you Ben. Like somebody else was there. Wait until I tell everyone how looney you’d gone, mind now mush from the cold and your bad blood.”

Kane spits in his face. 

Hux snarls. 

Hux doesn’t imagine Kane will kill him quickly. He thrashes desperately to get away, like a mouse pinned under the claw of a felinx who enjoys to torture their food before dissaembling it to be devoured. Hux refuses to be the mouse here. He may be staining the forest floor with black blood, but his fight isn’t out of him yet. 

Out of his peripheral vision he sees Kane winding up to strike him again, Hux takes advantage of the distraction. Hux with one swift movement sinks his blade in the tender flesh of the ankle of the foot pinning him. Kane shrikes a curse and lifts his foot. Hux quickly rolls out from under him. 

Hux runs towards the tree line, tracking Kane’s stumbling movements over his shoulder. He leads the other boy to a thick tree, waits, and when Kane swings to sink his blade into the flesh of Hux’s back with another roar, Hux ducks and then rolls out of the larger boy’s shadow. Kane wedges his blade into the trunk of the tree. 

While Kane struggles to free his knife, Hux collects some of his blood that's steadily pouring from his side into his hand and then charges. He leaps onto Kane’s back, wrapping his long legs around the other boy’s thick torso, and cradles Kane’s neck into a headlock. Kane stumbles away from the tree trying to throw Hux off, but the red haired boy holds firm. 

Hux ducks his head until his lips are level with Kane’s ear. “Black blood burns,” he snarls and raises the hand covered in his own blood. Hux smears it across the hard planes of Kane’s face, then releases his hold on Kane allowing himself to drop to the ground once more. 

Hux quickly back pedals away from Kane, to safely wait and watch as Kane’s skin that’s been painted with Hux’s blood begins to boil and bubble. Kane drops to his knees with a scream, hand scrubbing at the flesh of his face that begins to slip from his skull. Hux relishes in the sight until Kane’s screams cease, his large form collapsing into the snow with a loud thump and his skull nothing more than a pinkish, goopy, pile of flesh.

Hux sighs and then proceeds to crawl to a different tree to prop himself up against. Blood flows from the stab wound in his side, he places a heavy hand over it in an weak effort to stave off the blood flow. Hux’s vision is already beginning to blur. He fights the swirling black dots before him that threaten his life with as much vigor as he can muster, but he’s losing the fight.

Hux feels as if after all of this, he will die here in the snow. Which is unacceptable but seemingly unavoidable. 

Heavy flakes begin to fall from a gray sky. 

It is then that Ben appears to him.

Ben’s tall form emerges from a cluster of trees at the other end of the clearing. He looks different than the previous times Hux has caught glimpses of him when Hux has shared their dreams. 

Ben is a picturesque form of darkness. He is a blimp of black in the blindingly white snow, a welcomed rest for Hux’s weary eyes. Gone are the uniforms of a Jedi. Ben wears long flowing robes of the deepest sort of black that cover nearly every inch of him, leaving only his pale face and hands bare. His hair is free of his Padawan braids, ebony hair flowing lazily in the winter wind.

_ Maker he’s beautiful, Hux _ thinks dumbly.

Ben approaches Hux with a ghost-like quality in his movements but a gentle smile on his face. “I’m getting better,” he says, smugly presenting himself with wide hands.

Hux opens his mouth to make a smart comment, but all that comes out is blood. 

Ben’s steps quicken and he falls to his knees before Hux. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs stroking Hux’s face with hands that can’t possibly be real. One of those hands go to rest over the wound in his side, Hux gasps and instantly tries to pull away. He adamantly shakes his head at Ben when the other boy tries to touch his wound again. 

Ben stares at Hux with eyes swimming with hurt and puzzlement, that is until he looks at the burnt body of Kane behind him. “Oh,” Ben gasps with understanding, “don’t worry I won’t burn, unfortunately I’m not actually here.” 

_ Force projection, _ Hux’s foggy brain supplies. 

Ben then approaches Hux’s wound once more. With understanding, Hux’s let’s the other boy lay his pale hand on him.

The weight of Ben’s hand on his side is a welcome anchoring warmth. It may be the romantic in him, but Hux can’t think of a better place to die than in Ben’s arms. With all the strength he can muster he scoots closer, he rests his head on Ben’s broad shoulder, pressing a bloody kiss to the fabric. He looks up at Ben, willing those brown eyes to meet his own green ones.

Hux has so many questions but not enough time. So when Ben finally looks at him, Hux mouths with slow moving lips the words;  _ beautiful, A ghar, and I love you.  _

“You’re not dying,” Ben says firmly, the first bulbs of tears welling in his eyes. 

Hux gives him a placating sort of expression, not willing to stamp down whatever hope Ben may have that Hux will make it out of this. 

“Stay still, moving will make this very difficult.” Ben scolds, then a pleasant sort of warmth fills the fatal wound of Hux’s flesh. There’s a pushing flow resembling that of the seas Hux adores, and then Hux feels the blood clear his throat enabling him to speak once more.

“What?” He croaks. 

“The Force,” Ben explains, continuing to slowly heal Hux. “It’s nothing sexy, but it’ll do until the Academy’s High Command comes to retrieve you.”

Hux nods slowly. “How?” He asks hoping Ben understands. 

He does. “I was able to get away with the help of my new Master, I only wounded Skywalker but I burned down the Jedi school before I left the planet...I’m with my new Master now...and am no longer a Jedi.”

Hux nods leaning into Ben further, pressing a dry kiss to his neck.

Ben huffs flicking a bit of dark hair from his eyes. “Your beard itches,” he says.

Hux pinches him in retaliation and then tucks the offending lock of hair behind one of Ben’s large ears. They remain there in pleasant silence for a good long while, saying nothing and everything between. Despite the circumstances their reunion is blissful and ends all too quickly for Hux’s liking. 

Ben’s form flickers, bringing a sadness to his brown eyes. “I-I have to go now, my new Master beckons me,” he says moving his hands to cradle Hux’s face. There must have been panic in Hux’s eyes because Ben kisses his hairline and says calmly. “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to speak with you again...he approves of you...of us...of our  _ caim… _ but my new training starts with a long vow of silence, so that I may be permeable to wisdom of Sith lords who came before me.” He ducks his head to lock eyes with Hux. “There will never be anyone else for me but you,” Ben whispers sincerely, “so please wait for me Armitage, I beg you.” 

Hux nods his head weakly and agrees to Ben’s plea, scoffing at the idea that there would be anyone but Ben for himself either.

Hux cradles the back of Ben’s neck and says earnestly,  _ “ _ _ Ama me fideliter, Fidem meam toto, Decorde totaliter, Et ex mente tota, Sum presentialiter, Absens in remota.” _

“What does that mean?” 

“ Love me faithfully, See how I am faithful, With all my heart and all my soul, I am with you, even though I am far away.”

Ben beams and then kisses Hux deeply in a clumsy sort of way full of teeth and uncontainable passion that Hux reciprocates fully. “I love you...so much,” Ben says, breaking from the kiss with tears pooling in his eyes.

“I love you too,” Hux says firmly using his thumbs to wipe away Ben’s tears with a tenderness that Hux himself never thought he’d be capable of.

Ben chokes on a sob and then kisses Hux hard again. His long nose is pressed against the soft flesh of Hux’s cheek, tears beginning to run freely from those brown eyes. While they’re kissing Ben flickers once, twice, and then out of focus, leaving Hux alone in the snow once more with the ghost of a kiss of his lover still on his lips. 

Hux lasts another hour or so before the fatigue of his excursion becomes too much and he passes out in the snow.

_ Day 1. _

Hux awakes in a medical bay surrounded by the prodding fingers of doctors dressed head to tail in protective gear. There’s forgein objects in the mouth; incubators and tubes to keep his breathing stable. There’s an IV in his arm leading to a bag hanging from a medal staff. His head is swimming. 

One of the doctors notices he’s awake. She whips a minascure flashlight from the pocket of her white hazard suit and shines the light in Hux’s eyes, watching his pupil intently. Hux blinks at the light, vision spotting. His stomach feels like a starship executing a series of barrel rolls. Her colleagues peer over her shoulder, diligently cataloguing Hux’s response. 

The doctor extinguishes the light and steps back to make a series of notes on her data pad while a number of encouraging sounds make it from the back of her throat. She looks up from her data pad and gives Hux another smile.

“Welcome back Petty Officer,” she says cheerfully, and then presses the cool metal of a long aspired for triple V-shaped badge into the palm of his hand. She and her fellow doctors then vanish through a set of automatic doors located at the end of the medical suite. Once the doctors have gone, Hux lets his eyes fall shut and focuses on the sensation of the metal in his hand. He pictures brown eyes in his mind’s eyes, his heart begins to ache. 

_ Day 5.  _

Days later the badge is pinned to the chest of Hux’s new dress uniform at his graduation ceremony. His fellow officers and former classmates applaud him. Even his Father shakes his hand with a strong grip. Through the entirety of the day Hux wrestles with feelings of mixed pride at his own accomplishments and disappointment that Ben could not be intermingled with the crowd to also offer Hux his congratulations as well as his love.

Beneath the heavy weight of his badge his heart aches with a terrible longing for Ben to be at his side. 

Later after a few celebratory drinks at the graduation’s reception, Hux finds himself feeling moderately disgusted with himself and this new found dependence on another person. There’s no use in wallowling eternally in the moments that Ben is absent, it’s not as if he will appear from beneath the woodwork. They both have work to do. 

So Hux swigs down the remainder of his whisky and rolls his shoulders back and levels his head in preparation to carry the burden of his heavy heart for the foreseeable future.

_ “Per angusta ad augusta,”  _ he mumbles. 

_ Day 4.784. _

12 long years later finds General Hux reviewing budget reports in the peace of his office on the First Order’s flagship,  _ The Finalizer _ . His glasses sit on the bridge of his nose and a most beloved great coat is draped over the back of his black leather desk chair. A cup of tea sits at his left and a well organized desktop monitor sits at his right, chirping every so often notifications of correspondence. Hux scrolls idly through the documents on his screen, eyes darting every so often to the communicator that's resting near his tea cup. He’s awaiting the arrival of the Supreme Leader’s apprentice, who was due to arrive nearly an hour ago, filling the time with busy work while debating when it would be an appropriate time to notify Snoke of his apprentice’s absence. 

He decides to give it another handful of minutes beforing using the secure channel to contact the Supreme Leader and strategize a new course of action. Just as Hux is diving into the thicket of the medical budget allocation, his com chims with a contact request from Mitaka. Hux presses the small button on the side of the device to accept the request and says, “go for Hux.”

“Sir we’ve received Kylo Ren and are enroute to your office,” Mitaka says through the line. 

“Very good Lieutenant, I await your arrival.” 

“Sir.”

Hux puts the com down on the desk once more. He sleeps the monitor’s screen before him and removes his glasses, tucking the frames away into their case on his desk. He debates dawning the great coat slung over the back of his chair, but inevitably decides against it. He stares at the door before him with steepled fingers, waiting for the arrival of the ever elusive Kylo Ren, taking care to school his face into something akane to indifference to disguise his irritation at the whole situation. Having been forced to share command with a party that has existed exclusively outside the structure of his most beloved military, who also apparently has no regard for whose time he wastes. If this is how the rest of their time together is meant to proceed, Hux fails to see at this moment how Snoke expects them to work together on the numerous upcoming projects for the Order. 

Moments later there’s a tentative knock on his door that he instantly recognizes as Mitaka’s. Hux rises from his chair and smoothes the front of his uniform. “Enter,” he commands. 

The door wooshes open and Mitaka marches in followed by a dark looming masked figure. He’s dressed head to toe in dark loose coverings and a cowl that are so out of place from the uniformed regalia Hux has grown accustomed to. The eye sockets of his mask are a bit unsettling in their blatant absence of human life. Overall Kylo Ren fills up the space of his office with a sensation of forboarding that has preceded the knight's reputation and has Mitaka standing a fair distance away from the man. 

Hux spares Mitaka and says, “thank you Lutientdant, you’re dismissed.”

“General,” Mitaka says with a salute before scurrying from the room. The door closes behind him, leaving Hux and Ren alone. 

Hux clears his throat to distill the silence that has settled over the space. “General Hux” he says extending his hand “I’ve heard much about you Lord Ren.”

Ren in turn does not take the offered hand shake and says nothing. He just breathes heavily through the voicecorder of his mask, Hux feels his eye begin to twitch. 

Hux slowly lets his hand drop, willing the growing irritation from his face. He chooses to change tatic. “Please have a seat,” Hux offers with as much pleasantness in his voice that he can manage while gesturing to one of the leather seats located at the other side of his desk.

Again Ren makes no sound, but blessedly, this time he chooses to move but not towards the chairs. Ever so slowly his hands rise to his face, where fingers work over a series of clasps located around the jawline of the mask. Hux watches the movements curiously. Soon the mask free’s Ren’s face with a gasp, releasing an all too familiar mane of black hair and dearly missed brown eyes.

The pair of them, Ben and Hux, just stare at each other for a good long while, before the dark haired man decides to speak for the first time since he’s entered the General’s office. 

“You shaved,” Ben says gruffly. 

“You’re late,” Hux breathes.

Ben’s mask drops to the floor, where it lands with a loud clunk. The pair of them move swiftly until they meet together in a blissful collision of bodies and mouths.

Ben’s lips are plush under Hux’s own thinner mouth, where they move desperately in their effort to devour the General. Hux can taste the rustic flavors of Ben’s mouth, which is an entirely new sensation to him that has him praising the maker that Ben was never able to taste the 2 month old bateria that had built up Hux’s own mouth during his time on Ilum. Hands wander over the plains of their bodies; Hux locating all of Ben’s tender spots and Ben wrinkling Hux’s uniform with their exploration. 

When Hux begins to run out of air he pulls away from Ben with a deep gasp. Ben keeps him close by gripping the side of his face firmly, not in a way that hurts but rather in a fashion that holds the other man steady. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben apologizes, tears welling in his eyes. “I was nervous...I was worried you’d forgotten...were angry....it’s been so long,” he finishes weakly, his fingers toying with Hux’s short hair that's stiff from the generous application of pomade. 

Hux runs a hand through that dark mane of hair he’s missed, “I missed you my A ghar.”

“I’m sorry I was quiet so long,” Kylo swallows thickly nuzzling the side of Hux’s face.

“I understand,” Hux nods because, despite the heartbreak and the loneliness of these years, he does. He gently kisses the cluster of moles near Ben’s nose. “I’ve stories of what you’ve done in the name of the First Order, and I am proud of who you’ve become in our time apart,” he says earnestly. 

Kylo shutters a sigh and begins to kiss the underside of Hux’s jaw.

“Oh  _ Ben _ ,” the General gasps.

“Actually, it’s Kylo now.”

“Kylo,” Hux amends head cranning sky word. 

Ben’s breaks away from Hux’s jaw long enough to fiddle with the General’s high collar, freeing a column of pale skin, where his mouth resumes its glorious work of charting the forgein territory of Hux’s previously hidden skin.

They neck for a while and then The General hears the door to his office lock with assistance from the invisible hand of the Force. He allows Ben-- _ Kylo-- _ to slowly maneuver them to the floor, where uniforms alike are slowly peeled from war torn bodies and Hux is kissed everywhere until his heart no longer aches. 

**Author's Note:**

> Ya made it! thanks for reading! I had a fun time writing this and seem to have a bundle of free times on my hands as of late so I think I'm gonna make this a series and add to this. Thanks for giving it a chance, I hope ya'll enjoyed it. 
> 
> As always comments and kudos are always appreciated but never expected. 
> 
> Hang in there,  
> Eiramma.
> 
> PS.  
> Fun Fact: From what I've gathered Caim is a Gaelic word meaning sanctuary/protection.


End file.
